1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to printed circuit (wiring) boards and methods of manufacturing the same, and more particularly, to a multilayer printed circuit board with additional functionality and a method of manufacturing the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
Most electronic systems include printed circuit boards with high density electronic interconnections. A printed circuit board may include one or more circuit cores, substrates, or carriers. In one fabrication scheme for the printed circuit board having the one or more circuit carriers, electronic circuitries (e.g., pads, electronic interconnects, etc.) are fabricated onto opposite sides of an individual circuit carrier to form a pair of circuit layers. These circuit layer pairs of the circuit board may then be physically and electronically joined to form the printed circuit board by fabricating an adhesive (or a prepreg or a bond ply), stacking the circuit layer pairs and the adhesives in a press, curing the resulting circuit board structure, drilling or laser drilling through-holes, and then plating the through-holes with a copper material to interconnect the circuit layer pairs. The curing process is used to cure the adhesives to provide for permanent physical bonding of the circuit board structure. However, the adhesives generally shrink significantly during the curing process. The shrinkage combined with the later through-hole drilling and plating processes can cause considerable stress into the overall structure, leading to damage or unreliable interconnection or bonding between the circuit layers during assembly and/or other thermal excursions. Thus, there is a need for material and associated processes which can compensate for this shrinkage and can provide for stress-free and reliable electronic interconnection between the circuit layer pairs.
In addition, the plating of the through-holes (or vias) with the copper material requires an additional, expensive, and time consuming process sequence that is difficult to implement with a quick turnaround. Thus, there is a need to provide for a printed circuit board and a method of manufacturing the same that can be quickly and easily assembled and/or ensure alignment of the interconnections (or through-holes or micro vias) on the printed circuit board during the assembly process to thereby reduce assembly costs. Further, there is a need to provide a multilayer printed circuit board with additional functionality and a method of manufacturing the same.